Friday, September 24, 2010

Nudnik

Paramount, in need of a new cartoon star, decided to distribute the Nudnik films alongside their own studio's cartoons in the 1965-67 period.

Nudnik, produced by Rembrandt Films and directed by Gene Deitch in Prague, was a pantomime cartoon about a scrappy hobo who tries to do good, only for his extreme bad luck to backfire on him. The series in a way is a callback to the silent comedies, complete with slapstick action not far off from Charlie Chaplin's Tramp character and the rag-time music playing in the background (in the pilot Here's Nudnik a jazz music was used instead).

Deitch had high hopes for Nudnik, considering them to be his favorite of all the characters he created. Unfortunately they came out at a bad time, literally right when Paramount decided to stop distributing cartoons to theaters. 13 cartoons were produced and that was it...

...until the early 1990s, when the cartoons were packaged into a half-hour show (mixed in with other cartoons Rembrandt Films owned) and syndicated worldwide by Sunbow as Gene Deitch presents The Nudnik Show.

The theme song is "Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams" by Harry Barris, Ted Koehler, and Billy Moll.

1 comment:

Deitch told me that Nudnik was a re-do of his Terrytoon character Foofle. Also, it should be noted that the first Nudnik cartoon (Here's Nudnik) was nominated for an Academy award (under its original title, Nudick No. 2).